In it to Win IT!

[Chulke]

Good Morning My fellow TSPers...Soooo I am back at it again, back to following a seasonal strategy... 2022 was a rough year for me in my TSP investing endeavors after dropping somewhere around 11% by May of that year I chose to jump out and hang in G fund and that's where I stayed through all of 2023, At least till October...Things were so volatile I just didn't trust the seasonal strategies to keep my account growing! Everything seemed to be turned on it's ear!

Fast Forward to 2024....I am back at it again, keeping a watchful eye on my strategy and my account balance. I have been and continue to follow strategy# 152300 at least for now. Something I noted when I made my first trade for the new year, into the S fund, was that, the first day following the xfer to that fund per the strategy was a down day and that happens EVERY SINGLE TIME I MAKE A TRADE...and it got me to thinking...as this is not the first time this has happened to me, I wonder if someone or some people out there in hedge fund/ Wall Street land is watching the money flow of TSP investors and pulling strings to tank that particular fund at least temporarily so they can strip some money out for themselves...Maybe I'm wrong but, it just strikes me as odd that almost every time I make a transfer into a fund that next day turns out to be a negative day, hence I/we lose money!

Thanks for giving me an avenue to rant!

Cheers!

(P.S. I also just got promoted to GS12 so I got to consider that into my future financial/ tax planning for the coming years, and that's what got me thinking about all of this!)

[Scarfinger]

That reminds me of something I noticed when looking at several strategies. I noticed around a 3 day window for day of transfer between the several strategies I was looking at.

Also reminds me that I have heard analyst say… if you miss these 5 or maybe it was 10 (some number) of positive days you will miss out on good returns hence forth suggesting a buy and hold strategy.

I do like buy and hold because it takes me out of the equation. But currently I am using a tspcal strategy but trying to stay more diversified.

Best of luck!

[Aitrus]

That reminds me of something I noticed when looking at several strategies. I noticed around a 3 day window for day of transfer between the several strategies I was looking at.

Also reminds me that I have heard analyst say… if you miss these 5 or maybe it was 10 (some number) of positive days you will miss out on good returns hence forth suggesting a buy and hold strategy.

I do like buy and hold because it takes me out of the equation. But currently I am using a tspcal strategy but trying to stay more diversified.

Best of luck!

True, but they somehow never seem to include the opposite, which also applies just as equally: if you are buy-and-hold, you will also always experience the 5 (or maybe it was 10) worst days every year too. The two tend to generally cancel each other out, with some years having advantage one way and some years having advantage the other.

[Chulke]

The thing I dislike about buy and hold is that it limits your earning potential to that of the fund you are investing in...Whereas with a strategy you can spread the wealth and take advantage of one fund performing better at a given time....My problem is that other people that are NON-TSP investors could be using our strategy against us and thereby making themselves a bunch of money.

Like, if we could somehow keep our strategies secret and verify everyone with access on the TSP investing sites were indeed federal employees with a TSP, we might stand a chance of being more successful! Potentially!


Cheers!

[bloobs]

....My problem is that other people that are NON-TSP investors could be using our strategy against us and thereby making themselves a bunch of money.

Fair hypothesis, that Big Money has access to high quality (insider) information and analytics to see the big picture and flow of money through the markets--in addition to having the leverage/resources to actually influencing its actions.

We don't have that privilege but our (only) strength is to watch big money moves as diligently as possible and REACT accordingly.

[Jimmyk65]

Chulke Congrats on the promotion! Nice bump with the cost of living in there.

I wonder how many TSP folks are using strategies to time (trade) the market. TSP calc facebook page suggests it has 48.2K members. Say 50K. With 6,989,602 tsp participants* that is about 0.72% of tsp population moving money due to strategy use.

If they were all millionaires or even multi-millionaires roughly $50-100 million is moving between funds on an active strategy move week at best. I can't even follow strategies I pick. Don't have the stomach for and kick myself repeatedly for not following a strategy more closely.

How much money moves through the various exchanges on any given day? I don't know but a quick search shows more than $5 trillion is traded on average every day in the foreign exchange market. 50 million /$5 trillion is really small percentage 0.001%. I would guess TSP folks probably are not moving the needle much in the bigger scheme of things. But maybe considering a bigger seasonality picture (all those following seasonality trends) it would not be surprising if someone has figured how use Quant or AI analytics to profit off of seasonal trends. After all, in some way it is the premise of tsp calc strategies.

Bloobs makes a good point on being diligent using the strategies along with analysis and reacting according to your tolerance for risk and personal goals and where you are on the retirement timeline is important. Different for everyone. I have really been enjoying the posts in the just like clockwork thread. Just trying to continually learn and become a better investor.

"It is not the return on my investment that I am concerned about; it’s the return of my investment. ” — Will Rogers

*https://www.fedsmith.com/2024/01/26/num ... e_vignette

[Bubba]

I've always been wondering if I should do a "halfsies" strategy, where I play with 50% instead of 100% using a strategy. If you were to remain in the S fund for middle to late October through March, April through the end of July in C, out in August, September and early October and then run away when the 3 month uninverts (yield curve inversion), then you would end up with a healthy 16 to 18% CAGR (backtested that from 1986 to 2021). Then you would always get the "up days" mentioned above. Of course you would get the down days too...

I'm 100% strategy...but always wondering...

[Chulke]

Fair hypothesis, that Big Money has access to high quality (insider) information and analytics to see the big picture and flow of money through the markets--in addition to having the leverage/resources to actually influencing its actions.

Furthermore, If you take into consideration that Blackrock manages the TSP funds as well as being one of the largest investment firm in the world, controlling the largest amount of assets, $9.42 Trillion or thereabouts to be exact, it's easy to come to a conclusion that someone or some people CAN see when us TSPers are moving our money!

I know people say that the TSP accounts are only a drop in the bucket when compared to all the money transacted on the exchanges on any given day...but it is possible the someone is queuing in on our strategies in an effort to thwart OUR advances! Perhaps someone or some people within Blackrock??

IDK, I am a skeptical person by nature and believe very few things happen by accident...so seeing my chosen fund sink the day my money moves into it practically EVERY single time I make a interfund xfer just catches my attention! And makes me think someone is watching!


Food for thought!



Cheers!

[tnwhiskey]

...I know people say that the TSP accounts are only a drop in the bucket when compared to all the money transacted on the exchanges on any given day...but it is possible the someone is queuing in on our strategies in an effort to thwart OUR advances! Perhaps someone or some people within Blackrock??

IDK, I am a skeptical person by nature and believe very few things happen by accident...so seeing my chosen fund sink the day my money moves into it practically EVERY single time I make a interfund xfer just catches my attention! And makes me think someone is watching!...

I see what you are saying but think you are giving them too much credit That theory would require the overseers to monitor the movement of every single strategy which many have different days even though some are within a few days or so of each other. If they were truly trying to derail your efforts then the vast majority of the strats would not work at all. Believe me, I know it's discouraging when you enter an ITF on a green day only for that fund to go red the next. Just remember if you follow the strats as intended, then the outside noise doesn't exist. Easier said than done though

[bloobs]

...I know people say that the TSP accounts are only a drop in the bucket when compared to all the money transacted on the exchanges on any given day...but it is possible the someone is queuing in on our strategies in an effort to thwart OUR advances! Perhaps someone or some people within Blackrock?? ...

I see what you are saying but think you are giving them too much credit That theory would require the overseers to monitor the movement of every single strategy which many have different days even though some are within a few days or so of each other. If they were truly trying to derail your efforts then the vast majority of the strats would not work at all.

Blackrock can do all this without even the need to monitor "movement of every single (TSP) strategy", which is information they wouldn't have. However, all they would need is analyze the millions of transactions of the funds bought and sold that are dictated by these strategies using very powerful Quant or AI/ML analytics as Jimmyk65 astutely pointed out (remember, Blackrock governs these funds and has absolute entitlement and access to this dataset.) This technology has been in place to crank this insight out in a literal push of a button.

Blackrock is for-profit private corporation with massive resources, including insight into all this data. Like any other mega corp., their only purpose is to make the maximum amount of profits for their bosses if they believe they can get away with it.

So yes, they can and probably have been doing it, simply because they easily can and would gain from it massively. But their actions are not always to our detriment--as long as we are wise to their game--and act accordingly.

[tnwhiskey]

Blackrock can do all this without even the need to monitor "movement of every single (TSP) strategy", which is information they wouldn't have. However, all they would need is analyze the millions of transactions of the funds bought and sold that are dictated by these strategies using very powerful Quant or AI/ML analytics as Jimmyk65 astutely pointed out (remember, Blackrock governs these funds and has absolute entitlement and access to this dataset.) This technology has been in place to crank this insight out in a literal push of a button.

Blackrock is for-profit private corporation with massive resources, including insight into all this data. Like any other mega corp., their only purpose is to make the maximum amount of profits for their bosses if they believe they can get away with it.

So yes, they can and probably have been doing it, simply because they easily can and would gain from it massively. But their actions are not always to our detriment--as long as we are wise to their game--and act accordingly.

Good perspective.

[Scarfinger]

I've always been wondering if I should do a "halfsies" strategy, where I play with 50% instead of 100% using a strategy. If you were to remain in the S fund for middle to late October through March, April through the end of July in C, out in August, September and early October and then run away when the 3 month uninverts (yield curve inversion), then you would end up with a healthy 16 to 18% CAGR (backtested that from 1986 to 2021). Then you would always get the "up days" mentioned above. Of course you would get the down days too...

I'm 100% strategy...but always wondering...

That is an interesting thought. I have thought about 50% L3035 and 50% strategy. I have bought in to the buy & hold with diversification. I find it hard to stay strong all in with a strategy. Last year I was basically L2035. This year I have started out following a strategy but making it more diversified which basically gives me more piece of mind so I hopefully can follow through.

[Aitrus]

My perspective on others (not day traders, I'm referring to the big boys and power brokers) seeing what we're doing and seeking to thwart us: it's possible, but unlikely because it likely wouldn't be profitable for them. We collectively make so little money in the big scheme of things, and in order to counteract that they'd need to change their strategy and lose more money elsewhere. In effect, they'd be chasing us "little fish" and intentionally not chasing the "big fish" like they normally do.

[bloobs]

https://youtu.be/oKprr3tEBew?t=24

We were warned in 1992

[Chulke]

S fund giving it all back I see! Lovely!


Cheers!